Teachers' perceptive [sic] on co-teaching at the middle school level

Effective collaboration between general and special education teacher is essential\ud for successful inclusion for students with disabilities. The survey was conducted to\ud examine general and special education teachers' and administrators' perspective\ud toward co-teaching at a middle school level. The study examined Shivela Middle\ud School in Murrieta, a suburban sixth through eighth grade middle school in Southern\ud California in the United States. The survey questionnaire was adapted from the co-teaching\ud self-assessment instrument developed by Villa, Thousand, and Nevin (2004).\ud Overall, teachers and administrators rated the questionnaire items highly important.\ud Teachers rated the highest importance on the items in flexibility with teaching\ud partners, identifying student's strengths and weaknesses, personal relationships, and\ud communication. Administrators generally perceived the elements of items higher in\ud importance than the teachers. Teachers' perspective differed according to their\ud current teaching assignments, years of teaching experience, years of co-teaching\ud experience, and kind of credentials held. Sixth grade core teachers and multiple\ud credentialed teachers gave significantly higher importance ratings than the seventh\ud and eighth grade single subject teachers. Special education teachers gave less positive\ud importance ratings than the administrators or multiple subject credentialed core\ud teachers but gave more positive ratings than the single subject math or science\ud teachers.\ud Keywords\ud Co-teaching, Teacher, Perspective, Collaboration, Inclusion, Team-teachin